even more focus on the question of race and less biographical, but it became clear in research at the more it became a biography full-blown, and i fully expected 20 or so now, or however many years now, some new robert carroll will come along and write a six volume biography with all the requisite archives. that goes without saying. but, in fact, i saw you at the inauguration. there was a party for when i've of what written a book. . .

>> whether it was at harvard law school, chicago, hawaii, all the obvious spots. >> when you were -- did you do much to fill in -- i don't want to say blanks, but to fill in spaces in his own book because he's told us his own story. but you learn much more in researching this book. did you find that it was difficult to get people to open up and talk to you about this? >> no, not really. >> one of the things that many of his friends and acquaintances have been very guarded with his story. >> i didn't find -- once you get into the political class, once you get into the area of people running campaigns and have resentments or vendettas or reason to stay quiet it's a

trickier transaction, the word on background and okay to quote and all that washington/new york stuff comes into play. but going to chicago and talking to former mates and community organizers and women who worked with him -- there was no hesitation at all. it was fun. that's the kind of reporting i like best and the whole transaction off the record, on the record and all the gradations in between is tedious and also becomes very tricky in terms of whether you're being told the truth or being spun like a top. >> there were a few people we meet along the way who really help us develop a much fuller picture and i want to begin in hawaii because there was a stanley dunham who was the mother. her father wanted her name because it was a grave

disappointment that his daughter had been otherwise. [laughter] >> she eventually went ann but his name was, wait for it, stanley. [laughter] >> and she decided to be an anthropologist at a certain point. and particularly in the area of indonesian studies. crafts men and she found an academic mentor at the university of hawaii who happened to be the granddaughter of john dewy. her name is alice dewy. you asked about the difference of his memoir and autobiography and this book. they're radically different. i think memoir and autobiography is a story. it's the story we tell of ourselves. they can be deeply researched. i know that you've been working on one. i think obama did research for his. but it's a highly shaped thing.

literary work. and his book has no politics in it, whatsoever. his book ends when politics begin. it's a prepolitical mantel that he may have had ambition. but to go back to hawaii, the other big missing piece or one of the larger missing pieces in the autography is the mother. it's called "dreams for my father" and it's about in many ways somebody trying to do battle with, learn about, reconcile with a ghost, a missing -- an utterly missing father who leaves the household after infancy, or fantasy. -- infancy. reappears for 10 days when obama was a kid and disappears and obama hears all kinds of stories the way kids do but can't get his hands around it. and that's the big drama of the book. there are three big sections to the book.

it's a highly structured, young man's literary attempt. and it's very good. but it's highly structured. and at the end of each of these three big sections, this is not a man who cries and it ends with him weeping at his father's grave. his mother comes off, i thought, maybe you all disagree with the campaign and the journalism as kind of flighty, a certain kind of '60s character with a batik skirt and left-leaning international development, kind of trying to help her african-american son understand being african-american by giving him the mahalia jackson records. what could she do? in my view of it, and in my research of it, in talking to obama's half-sister who spent

more time with the mother, she's an immensely interesting figure. >> very complex. >> extremely complex. obama adores her. and yet is confused by her absences during high school and probably suffers from them. he's being raised by his grandparents. not everybody loves. i just found her to be an immensely richer character in life than he was -- than she was in his autobiography. >> she was trying to help him deal with being an outsider in many what's and yet when she brings him to indonesia, they have to basically move out of the house. >> it's exactly right. when she started doing research in java they lived on an old palace grounds. and because there was a relation there -- the second husband had royal relations so they were allowed to live on palace grounds in jakarta.

when obama, barack, jr., would make his educational trips to java to join his mother on vacation, they had to move off the palace grounds because it was one thing to have an american. it was quite another to have an african-american. i mean, this is not a guy suffers the slings and arrows and knife sticks of john lewis. but as one of the great heroes of the civil rights movement said, you're born into this country at any generation as an african-american and you don't escape suffering at all. and so barack obama -- the night he becomes an international figure it becomes in the summer of 2004, boston. he's a state senator. if you're in d.c. you don't have a state senator. [laughter] >> but i can go in front of an audience and raise your hand if you know who your state senator is. six hands will go up and five are lying.

[laughter] >> he's running for a senate seat. he makes this speech that knocks everybody out. everybody knows who he is. he's on every national television show and radio show and in newspapers and magazines. profiles here and there. he goes to logan airport, with his campaign manager a white southerner, and he's pulled aside for extra wanding and others. that didn't happen to jim cauly. he said, barack, what the hell. and quote, dude, not to worry. i've got it. this has been happening to me all my life. so they're not the knife sticks of the moses generation. nobody is suggesting for a second that he didn't have access to elite institutions occident occidental, columbia, harvard law school but he didn't escaped that experience either. i don't care if he grew up in hawaii. even in hawaii which prides

itself on multiculturalism, except for one thing. all the black people are on military bases except for a couple kids here and there. so it was a really difficult struggle for him. >> and how does that inform his personality. a very good friend of his and advisor of his often describes him as living in america as a black man is to experience something that he aikens to deep muscle tissue bruising. not the kind of thing that he might be able to see but the kind of thing that you feel and aches in a way that they might feel arthritis. it's there. and it surfaces and lets you know that it's there from time to time. to the extent that -- >> the dean of law school at berkeley and has known obama for obama. it's much harder than rocket

science. [laughter] >> one of his friend from harvard law school is a woman named cassandra butts who was a friend and has worked for obama described obama as a translater because of his unique interpreter. somebody -- the way you have an interpreter when you go to a foreign country and that person becomes your lens. and he grew up in most of a way that do not he's able to do that in a political sense. he can go into an african-american church and claim a credibility there. and he had to achieve that and he didn't just walk in the door as a child. but he can go also to other communities and translate that community to them that, therefore, the bridge is maybe not ill-found. it's not just a historical one. that obama himself acts as a

bridge. again, i don't want to dive too deep into the goo of psychohistory. it's a dangerous and muddy and really inconsequential place. but there's no doubt that people's backgrounds and their association and the way they grew up and the way they were educated and the historical moment they were in, affects who they are and that affects their presidency. i'm not suggesting for a second that he's thinking about race when he's in the situation room and he's talking about iran or afghanistan. but it has its effect both politically, personally intellectually and otherwise. >> there was a meeting -- several meetings actually in the lead-up in his decision to run for president when he was surrounded by friends and advisors. and in one particular meeting he talks about what it would mean to run for black america and he talks about how he would -- he envisioned what that moment would feel like for young people to wake up the morning after the

election and realize, wait, the united states just elected a black man as president for the country. he talked about that. do you get a sense he was thinking about what that moment would mean for white america and particularly for various segments of white america that might be resistant? >> i don't want to be glib, what's the difference? in other words, african-american history is american history. >> uh-huh. >> there's no american history free of african-americans. african-americans were here a lot earlier than my relatives who have been around for generations. and there's no american culture without african-american culture whether it's music or literature, et cetera. this is just who we are. so it affects all of us. and you're seeing the difficult side of it now. you're seeing -- >> that's what i'm asking about. was he thinking about some of that element --

>> it wasn't going to happen smoothly. whether he got elected or not. and you see in the tea party movement -- i'm not suggesting everybody in the tea party is racist or in the majority or even the remotely the majority. there are real economic concerns that bubble up and have caused this throughout american history these kind of movements happen. but at the far end of it, you have seen and heard some pretty ugly things. and it can't be by coincidence that the nature of these ugly things are this conbustion -- combustion of insecurity. it's t-creates a certain kind of vocabulary and outrage. you saw the phone message -- john lewis of all people, a phone message left on his machine. again, i don't want to suggest for a second that one phone message paints an entire movement as racist. that would be outrageous and wrong.

there's some small part of the country that uses terms like we want our country back. that there's a kind of nostalgia. >> want to reach back in the early years again because in reading the book some of you have purchased the book because we don't want to give too much away -- [laughter] >> and buy one for your friends if you want and family members. on reading the book, barack obama comes across as someone a deeply ambitious man.

>> i think that's kid talk. and it's not a parent who has told his kid that you could grow up to be anything. >> he was running for congress -- >> he ran for congress that he got beat so bad. i think he got really serious about himself in terms of ambition when he not only gets in the harvard law school but he becomes president of the harvard law review. that's when you begin to tell yourself if you're possessed of a healthy and enlarged or even engorged ego -- [laughter] >> that not only am i in this elite place, you know, the birth place of supreme court justices and senators and so on, but the best of the best. and in his case because of he was the first african-american president of the harvard law review, the next morning fox

butterfield is writing it on the "times" and the wires and it's all over the media. wow! so even when he's running for small potatoes offices, there's a large sense of where it could all go. chicago doesn't immediately throw his arms up any office you want to be the mayor here, it's yours. he has to contend with the fact that there's no way he was going to be mayor. because he guy he would have run against and waited to leave he's still in the office now. [laughter] >> and his acts of running were acts of impiety. he ran for state senate in '96 thanks to a sex scandal that allowed alice palmer to run for congress and she lost and tried to get back in that race and wanted obama to step aside. obama wouldn't do it and when she tried to get all those senators to get on the ballot, he got her thrown off the ballot.

>> he cleared the field. >> he cleared the field. he ran unopposed on the democratic side. in chicago politics, the republican side might have been the spartacus league. it's just not going to go anywhere. >> he ran in congress. he ran against a former black panther, a popular congressman, bobby rush. and he was defeated soundly not only because bobby's son has been -- was killed in an act of violence and then his father died and the community was really sympathetic. but also because he had no -- he didn't have the roots that bobby rush had. and bobby rush's campaign and another -- another opponent put it out on the street that -- who was barack obama? those questions didn't begin with sarah palin and john

mccain, who is barack obama? they began much earlier. who is barack obama? he's not one of them. he has a white mother. he's from hawaii. he's backed by the university of chicago. highly controversial institution on the south side. especially for black folk. and also his money is coming from white people, from jews. i mean, it got really, really ugly. and he got beat so bad that certainly michelle obama was not eager to repeat the experience and really left life for a little of this, little of that, writing, teaching, running a foundation. >> you know, people who are successful often succeed because they failed. if they learn the proper lessons from their setbacks. >> absolutely. >> what did he learn from that? >> he learned -- >> and was he able to go forward? >> he learned he's not a bobby rush and is going to succeed by

trying to out-bobby rush bobby rush. he starts to go on trips throughout the state. the suburbs around chicago. he starts going south in the state. with a kind of old political hand from the state legislator named dan showman. he starts to see white people at vfws in these southern counties who are culturally maybe closer to the southern states that they're a lot closer to than chicago aren't, you know, dismissing me. i'm getting a friendly reception here. i translate. and so when he decides to run for senate, it's not as if he wins the southern part of the state. but he does all right. and he does very well clearly in liberal suburbs like evanston. he sweeps the black vote and he gets a little lucky. he gets a little lucky, wait for

it, two more sex scandals. as you remember blair hull, who's certainly the richest candidate if not the best skilled goes down in flames when his divorce records are opened up and they are not a edifying spectacle. [laughter] >> then he's going to run against a very strong republican who a former goldman sachs partner who goes on to fund a really good school on the south side. he's done well and now he's going to do well and very handsome. and his divorce records are opened. and they involve french sex clubs and were -- and we're on c-span so i don't want to go too far. and he runs against alan keys, the most sacrificial of sacrificial lambs. so when barack obama in a competitive race in his whole life besides the harvard law

presidency is the iowa caucuses against hillary. >> he has -- we're going to get to the iowa caucus in a minute but i want to reach back because there's something very interesting in this biography. your lucky in life if you get one really good mentor who will put their hands on your shoulders and give you advice and tell you the kind of things you may not even want to hear. when the fairy godmother started passing out mentorships or good mentors, he was abundantly blessed. i mean, i could go on and on. it's a very long list. >> how does this happen? did they choose him or in some ways did he find -- >> you know, there are certain young people -- i remember kate boo wrote a piece about al gore a long time ago.

and she wrote that al gore is an older person's idea of a younger person. [laughter] >> and barack obama were more mature than the other students at harvard law. he was more poised. he wasn't feverish in his ambitions. the most overused word about barack obama. he was cooler about it. and he's also damn smart. and lawrence tribe was attracted to him. before that -- and i think this may be the most important mentor of all and someone who spent unbelievable amounts of time with him. when he was a community organizer, he was hired by a guy named jerry kellman, a jewish guy from new rochelle, new york. who converted to catholicism who's working with all these catholic parishes on the south side and he desperately needed a black organizer.

it was very hard for him to -- for obvious reasons to march into these black churches and, you know, expect everybody to, you know, drop before him and do what he wanted them to organize. and he found this skinny kid who had applied after reading an ad in the new york public library in a little tiny newspaper. and jerry kellman really was his coach, his teacher in the place where he finds -- and he's not responsible for everything 'cause jeremiah wright is also very important in this. it's the place and the time where he finds seriousness, a sense of idealism, a sense of community. and a sense of home. jakarta, and indonesia, that wasn't home. that was a sojourn. even hawaii to some extent -- he wasn't going back there. there was nothing for him there. the congressman for honolulu. that was not going to happen.

south side of chicago, not chicago, the south side of chicago, that was home. he also found a church is there which is very important and jeremiah wright is an essential figure in that early time for him. >> and he found michelle. >> and he finds michelle obama. he did an internship at a law firm and there was michelle obama who had preceded him at harvard law. she was about the same age. but because he had been an organizer, they weren't together at harvard law. and he was knocked out by her. she not so fast. >> she keeps him grounded. when the world is going crazy and the world seems to rise up and greet him wherever he goes. she's always saying things like i hope at some point he does something to earn all of these accolades.

[laughter] >> you know -- >> but as you describe it, part of the chemistry in their relationship. >> right. the shtick is she's the gimlet eye and the one puncturing his not inconsiderable self-regard sometimes. but in the end he seems to win most of the battles. all along the way she is very reluctant about electoral politics. i mean, she came from a family and from a city where the view of electoral politics is, you know, the daly. the great triumph of harold washington. they were excited on that in the community but very wary of electoral politics. and the whole idea of running for state senate -- by the way, she was right. it gets to the state senate, the black caucus can't stand him. the work is boring. he's bored. he finds it trivial. he has a very low boredom

threshold which speaks to his's go and an intellect and an ego. he runs for congress and he gets creamed and she goes enough is enough. we can do well and do good at the same time. we've got all these loans. enough is enough. he wins the senate seat. >> she's committed to community service as he is. >> but in a different way. she's very committed to community service and played that out as the professional woman. but electoral politics i think was something that she came to far, far less willingly. and obama himself pursued it really hard. >> what explains his restlessness? >> well, again, i want to be careful of the psychoanalytic couch. but i think there's a lot of his character that is created -- and he says so himself so there's no reason to indulge it, that it's

deliberately and counter-distinction to the father. once he actually learns about his father's career, he reacts to it. his father thought that he was going to be at the very pinnacle of post-colonial kenyan politics. he was going to go on this airlift as a young man to the university of hawaii. get the education that he could get in the united states. he then went to harvard and got a higher degree in economics. and he thought he was going to be back in nairobi in the circles of all the rest and he was going to have a extremely powerful voice there. somebody on the left spectrum of kenyan politics and it just all went south. politics didn't work out and it's a long story. politics didn't work out as he thought. he was extremely erratic in his personal life. he's a terrible husband. and not a very good father at all. at one point it's even -- one of

his children who now lives in china had said that obama, sr. beat one of the wives. and he becomes a terrible drinker and the life ends with him drinking and cracking up in a car and dying. this is the erratic life that obama simply wouldn't accept in his own life. and i think this kind of meticulousness -- the reserve, the carefulness -- he describes. this is no psychoanalyzing. he describes as at least in some part a reaction to this erratic father. >> how does people misinterpret or underestimate him when he first began that presidential run? and let's consider the first primary in iowa. >> remember, there are very few black people in iowa.

the last time i was there. [laughter] >> why is he in iowa? well, i think two big factors. lots of complexity goes into this. you run to the tiny caucus for forever. two things were important and let's leave aside hillary clinton's own campaign problems and divisiveness in that campaign and all their miscalculations, barack and organization. barack and organization. real discipline and a kind of innovative organization. and it's something to separate himself and capture a left-leaning democratic party faithful in iowa. very, very different from the victory in south carolina, which to me is an incredibly interesting drama. but once he wins iowa, people wake up? who's this guy? he beat hillary.

and suddenly they're on a -- or an almost equal plane and everything is gangbusters after that. >> i wonder one of the things people didn't fully realize is the importance of community organizing and what he learned from the brief period of time he spent as a community organizer and how he applied that to his candidacy. and i guess how he might even apply that to how he now operates in the white house? >> well, i think he's constantly using the metaphor of community organizing certainly in the campaign, less so now. but in the campaign, there's a metaphor for how he imagines when he was a politician and he starts giving his first interviews to the reader and the tribune he talks about the politician is in office and so on and so forth. we learned a lot about the saul lavinesky life.

he was as controversial and rough-mouthed and kind of rough figure, self-styled rough figure as you can imagine. very much of his time. obama was not that. although community organizing as such is -- especially with the legacy of saul levinsky. it gave more to barack obama than barack obama could ever give in that short period of time. he had some modest accomplishments, asbestos victory that eventually came to pass. it set up a job recruiting center that's collapsed under its own weight after a while. there's not much. and i think part of what he learned was the frustration and limitation of community organizing. that he looked around and he looked at harold washington's unfulfilled promise. here's somebody that spent his entire first term, harold washington, completely embroiled in a battle with the city council. he gets to a second term where he's going to get better and he dies at his desk and leaves

behind not the kind of political legacy organization that he could have or should have. obama as he was leaving for law school thinks to himself and says in his little round table discussions he has that you can dig up if you're so inclined or you can find them in a book, he says i've discovered in order to make any change in any real level despite the corruptions and the hypocrisies and the involvement of money you have to get elected to things. and so off he goes to harvard law school to get the tools to get elected to things. >> and his friend who actually once worked for emil jones who went to work for him realizes after he loses to bobby rush that politics really is in his blood. >> yes. he does. this is a guy named dan shoman

who is a former journalist from springfield. and worked for emil jones and kind of kicking and screaming at jones' said -- who is the head of the state senate. very powerful. and a real classic party regular type. this is not an innovative joshua generation. this is an old-style deal-making group. and he says to dan showman's wife can you please show him the rounds because he's a little lost here. he's not coming off well. some of his colleagues think -- you've heard this before prophesy orrial and showman himself him out and he gives him the illinois education. >> we're going to bring you all in the conversation. just a few more questions. one of the things that was very

interesting exercise to look at the early writings or the early speeches of the president. and in this case barack obama left the particular gift with the columns that he wrote in the small newspaper on the south side. and i want to ask you one in particular which was the column that he wrote after 9/11. >> yeah. >> which is so revealing in his world view, in his view of america also. budget sort of a confidence expressed at that time when many people sort of almost had an instinctive reach toward patriotism. >> michelle is referring to a column, a more or less steady colulump -- column that obama would write for. this is where i'm for a health

care program or i'm working on a racial profiling bill. they're fine. they're unspectacular. it's not exactly macon or many things at that level. they're okay. [laughter] >> after 9/11, i don't have local politicians were asked to weigh in on their feelings about it. and what it suggests for the country. and most of them are utterly in the -- in the mode of words of constellation. they are unremarkable. and obama writes much longer than anybody else. he prides himself on his writing. and he's taking a kind of, you know -- it's a horrible tragedy. and we must punish the guilty and so on. but -- and these are words in other people's mouths after 9/11 got in trouble, susan sonntag and others in certain ways, but the expression was not nearly as others as some others.

we must be careful in our grief and in our anger not to go too far. and we should be careful to adhere to the norms of american law in our pursuit of the guilty. i think i'm remembering this right. so in a way he was more state senator than was absolutely called for by the strictures and customs of being a state senator. but after a while he came up against the limits of that office and there was no way he was going to stay in there much longer. >> i'll probably open this up to the audience. i want to ask about a decision he made. early on in the administration when the white house had welcomed a group of young children to the building, michelle obama had said something almost in an ofnd manner while talking to the kids. she said, you know, this building was largely built by slaves. and this was something the kids in the audience sort of nodded their heads and much was made to

that remark because it is a historic fact but it's not something that is talked about much. you actually go back and spend a lot of time looking at the history of slaves in the white house and slaves who built the white house and i want to know why you decided to put that time and muscle. >> you're referring -- it's pretty close to the end of the book. he's been elected and the narrative is going to take us to the inauguration. and i stop the narrative and begin a section about precisely this. that slaves built the white house and go into granular detail about their names, and how much they were paid -- well, they weren't paid. the money went to the masters. much of the capitol is built by slaves. much of the dredging of the city that we're all sitting in now were done by slaves. slaves were sold outside in lafayette park.

there were slave auctions by a virginia company right there. and they went from lafayette park and were soon put on river boats and sent to the south. and i spend considerable time also recounting the story of african-americans in the white house. which until barack obama and modernity were black people in service, right? elizabeth kekly is one figure -- elizabeth kekly was mrs. lincoln's seamstress and she wrote a memoir and she was closer to the lincolns in some ways than almost anybody in the white house. she had an absolute bird's eye view. she wrote her memoir and mrs. lincoln felt betrayed and she ended her life in a home for the -- the indigent -- the colored indigents -- i forget the name of the institution in the washington area.

and also i recount the meeting between at the same time -- between frederick douglass and lincoln. it's interesting, henry lewis gates who became famous in the obama story a little later for reasons that we all know in the presidency described for me -- there was a long description of the book about his impressions of obama. and he said, look, the most radical thing about barack obama is that he's african-american. and then in a way he is a post-modern frederick douglass. and what did skip gates mean by this? he's somebody who's able to tell a story. frederick douglass had a unique capacity to tell his stories back and forth across racial lines. that he grew into a -- he's a figure that he's able to

translate such as cassandra butts was describing obama. this is a remarkable figure in our history, barack obama. however you feel about his mistakes. his faults, or his politics. wherever you come down on that, this book is by means a hate geography. but this happening -- somebody african-american and by his name becoming president is to paraphrase joe biden, a big deal. [laughter] >> let's invite the audience in. [applause] >> raise your hand and we can make our way to you with the microphone and we can start right down here with the gentleman in the gray. just a second. [inaudible] >> hi.

i'm looking forward to your book because of the personal nature. i've been fascinated by obama as a person since i read his book. i grew up in kenya. i met his father in '67. >> where were you when i needed you? [laughter] >> and so what you say about the father and mother is very badly in the sense that the father was never present. when you look at obama the man this is interesting not obama the politician, what you see is what i call genetic qualities from the father, the height, the cello like voice, in his father's case, a deep baritone and above all his supreme self-confidence and in his father's case it was in your face self-confidence and it's contained because he doesn't have to prove himself. his mother was the environmental side listening to somebody and

to get into somebody else's head. if you see it in the first discussion with his half-brother who's in china who at that time is a senior at stanford asking him to come back to china. you get these two sides of this. one genetic. the acute intelligence. the physic, the self-confidence, which has always stuck with barack obama, which enables him to dominate a group of people, all of whom are more senior than them. it's the 99th senator of the united states and he's able to do what he does. i'd be interested if your reaction. >> i can't argue with that. my only caution -- my only caution to that is to be careful as with any of us we are not absolute products of just the ingredients provided to us by genetics and parental argue but i can't argue with what you say.

it completely accords to the other people i interviewed. who describes obama, sr., extraordinarily deep voice, his self-confidence that became later as he became less successful and frustrated was more cockiness was an unattracted frustrated deceased bragadoccio, a lot of crying in his beer. your description is in accord with what i think a lot of us here know and certainly my own research. >> thank you. a question right here. i think your shirt is purple. yes. thank you. >> thank you. i'm retired from the u.s. land service. in wanted to ask you briefly, what do you mean by the joshua generation?

>> in 2007, shortly after announcing for the presidency, barack obama accepted the invitation of john lewis and others to go to selma, alabama, for the annual reactment of the beginning of the march from selma to montgomery. the seminal moment that loosened the floodgates for johnson to put forward a voting rights act. selma, alabama, being a scene of bloody sunday and just constant turmoil by design of the civil rights movement. and obama took this invitation and quickly thereafter hillary clinton accepted an invitation to come. and they both gave speeches, both very resonant churches. barack obama at brown chapel where king spoke all the time. and a speech he gave, unlike the announcement speech where the metaphor was lincoln and the

associations were all about lincoln and kind of general americanists, this is a speech directed towards almost exclusively to the african-american voters and population. because if he is going to get anywhere in this endeavor, he's got to win some huge proportion of the black vote. and the terms he used were -- and this -- this has been in black churches since forever, this metaphor of moses and leading people out of a promised land and people used to call martin luther king but they weren't calling -- they were calling him our moses figure. the previous generation represented by john lowry and most of the generation they suffered for us. and they have brought us this far. but the journey is far from complete. we are the joshua generation.

you can easily follow the biblical metaphor where it's going. and i implicitly in this speech -- i am the head of this joshua generation. it is an act of great rhetorical gal to say this. and he did. again, barack obama not lacking for self-confidence but he is after all running for president and to get the democratic nomination to get the vote. and the clintons if you remember, had an enormously deep relationship with many african-american leaders and the population in general. some people not and it was a diverse generation and a whole range of public opinion. obama could not assume the black vote so that's where that vocabulary comes from. and the joshua generation of politicians, as gwen ifill talks about and others includes the

present mayor of philadelphia, or in alabama arthur davis or cory booker in newark. there's a -- there's a lot of them. these are people in their 30s, 40s, 50s maybe in their 60s who were too young to experience the civil rights movement except on television as children. >> he was subjected to racism and discrimination because of his skin color. he was not subjected to the legacy of slavery. ane transgenerational transmission of trauma which often involves some strong self-destructive aspect in one's life. first issue, how important do you think this is? some people say that he's not african-american. he's african-american and american because of this distinction.

second quick point, part from the tea partiers, do you think that there's some -- that there's -- that the opposition to him, which is typical but maybe more so during his administration, derives from unconscious and conscious racial aspects? no black man should have -- should have this much privilege. he's uppity and we got to get him. >> as to the last question, to say that everybody who opposes barack obama has conscious or unconscious racism i think is immensely unfair. if barack obama were white, if he were john kerry pursuing more or less the same politics, or hillary clinton pursuing the same politics whether it's in foreign policy or domestic policy and faced this kind of opposition in congress or on the street, would i immediately ascribe it to racism? well, i couldn't or sexism in the case of hillary clinton.

i think people have real political disagreements and concerns and anxieties. there is such a thing of a panoply of opinions. do i think some of the opposition and some of the uglier voices directed at obama is directed at racism, i think that's undeniable. and as for his racial identity, you know, in large measure this is given to you. and you have something to say about it. when he filled out his census report, who am i to argue with that? especially me. i don't know what michelle would say. these are -- these are distinctions that the distinctions evolve with a very slight issue. that he has an african role, maybe it place in memory. that he experienced life as an african-american. you know, when he goes to -- to get his car, he has the keys

thrown to him as if he was assumed to go pick up the car as the guy who gets valet parking. when skip gates gets arrested in his home in handcuffs, i will guess this would not have happened to me. so these things happen. there is racism in this country. there are reasons for racial profiling laws. it's not the same as 19 cirque 4. -- 1964 and 1964 is not the same as 1865. there's been progress. but to think we live in some post-racial utopia, i don't know where this idea ever came from. it's just unbelievable folly. >> right here because i think i know her. >> in reading his autobiography, i was very interested in the part about his movement from occidental and then to columbia and i believe it the period of columbia where he's withdrawn.

and seems to have been very reflective. and i'm wondering in your research if you uncovered anything particular about that period in people who influenced him and what you made of that time 'cause it seems really important? >> it's a great question. he spent his first two years in occidental. and he wants a mr. open school. he wants a bigger school. he wants to be closer to an african-american population center. and columbia is right near harlem. and when he gets to columbia, by his own admission and his own description to me in interview, but also some classmates -- although i found it the hardest period to report out fully, and there's a reason for it. he becomes not just serious but self-serious. righteous.

he reads a lot. he runs in the park. and phil burner he kept up a correspondence for years after. but he's really -- he's not a monk. he has a social life. and he certainly has an academic life. although not a spectacular one. he lives a fairly quiet -- but he decides to get serious. the partying life starts to recede. when i first interviewed him in front of an audience like this in phoenix on that book tour time, i asked him about the passage about drugs. and i asked him if he inhaled ha-ha-ha. and he said that was the idea. a fair point. [laughter] >> but because of the life he led at columbia, it was -- i felt it important to report on occidental, about chicago, about hawaii border boxes a number of thing.

columbia he was more involuted. >> and i teach medieval history but the teach at george mason where obama came and spoke about health care. at one point he was saying he really didn't know how health care would play out in his reputation as a president. yeah, i believe him when he says that. and i was just wondering is that his modus operandi where he just does is going to be the best thing. or is he -- >> he lives in a democracy. he made no secret about the fact that he was for health care. in those, probably health care plan more far-reaching than what we finally ended up with. and he was elected. so this notion that he's imposing something on the nation by fiat as if this were a kind of, you know, di-natic situation is really wrong.

i think it's being a little faux-modest here. i think it's self-deprecating. i think what he would like to happen as this is seen as a domestic policy and initiative and success on the scale of social security or any of the big domestic policy initiatives that have taken place in this country. because of the nature of the politics right now, and because of the nature of the program itself because it's going to have to be worked on and improved as time goes by, some of this is up in the air. it's going to be very interesting to see what effect it has on the november election. the republican party is completely committed to the idea that the passage of health care will be the albatross around the neck of the congressional democratic candidates. obama is betting otherwise. we have time for two more questions. >> i have one right here.

>> i have a question that's more based on the political nuts and bolts of his ability to win. was he the genius behind the idea of using the internet which no one had done and the rest of them all kind of were absolutely up in the air about what in the world was going on? or did he just buy into these ideas and implored them and become reflective? in other words, did he delegate? or did this idea come from him because it was -- >> my former colleague at the "washington post" i think we sat 2 feet away from each other for a couple of years. thank you. no. i don't think he was an internet whiz himself. in fact, in the 2004 senate race in illinois he was deeply frustrated with the lack of an internet presence. and they put up, you know, a chat room or whatever.

it was a pretty primitive use of the net in illinois. it was much more traditional television advertising. and once they got who the more money they were able to reach markets that they didn't think they would have. how did he win that ways. his biggest opponent fell apart and obama himself kept proving himself to be a better and better candidate. that's the story of that democratic party race and the republican party race was a joke. he was giving money to other campaigns to keep -- yes. in the presidential race in 2008, i think a lot of credit for that internet initiative has to go to other people like david. [inaudible] >> yeah, i don't think there was any threat that when obama leaves office that he's going to take steve jobs' chair. [laughter] >> he likes the blackberry and that's fine. he has other things to do. >> you have a question? >> sure.

>> you started this idea of -- you said who is barack obama. and much of the -- much of his power and his critics and fans they can project whatever they want onto him. and he can be on every cover and president of the united states and still remains illusive. i was curious first off was he still illusive to you and what about is it about him and about us that makes us so? >> well, to some extent -- and i don't want to be too fancy about it. all people are illusive. we're illusive, into each other. if you start going too deeply and getting too deeply you're totally in the weeds that betrays verifiable fact or reporting or archives or whatever it is.

i think -- historical figures that are long gone and much more examined as barack obama remain mysterious to us. i don't know how many books are written about abraham lincoln. the notion that, ah, he wasn't born in hawaii. we're still hearing this stuff. i have to say in my own book, i have to say he was born on this day in this hospital because it's verifiable fact. there's a birth certificate. and to be extensive after that in a while is to indulge the fantasies and craziness of fevered pursuit. that said, obama clearly -- remember, he was mainly a state senator.

he was a senator for five minutes before the question started coming are you going to run for president. and the experience question, i thought, was completely legitimate. how could it not be? when your biggest political battle was dealing with ricky hendon and you're in the senate making your first trip to russia, this is not a deep experience. his story, his projection of his own story, his projection of his own family as a kind of metaphor for the country and the direction it was going in, and its diversity, you could see where that was driving the clinton campaign crazy because they had been deep into politics and policy for so many years. they thought it was their turn. >> i have one last question and i will be brief. i thank all of you for coming out tonight. and i thank you for the time and the muscle that you put into this book. >> oh, thank you.